PillarSoft

I recently went in to get my throat checked and in the process found out that I have diabetes. I now have to track my blood sugar and the doc even wants to know what I eat. I did a search for software to help track this information and as you may well know, I saw nothing for OS/2. A win solution doesn't fit for me as I do not want to reboot to do this. I'm staying with what I know...

I did find a template that I could use in 123 but it's kinda' "heavy" for something I just want to use to spot a number or meal info into three or four times a day. Like any good blue-blooded OS/2 user, I began a project to make it work for me.

At the start of this project I am asking if there are any others out there that have a need for a program like this. I would like to make it available for testing, feedback and use. Is this something we need?

Here are the capabilities so far...

• Track Bg readings for meals and snacks (pre/post), bedtime, fasting and "other".
• Track daily average of readings.
• Track weight.
• Track Appointments and Reminders.
• Track meal contents. (breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack)
• Track meal "Calories, Protein, Carbs and Fat" as well as their daily totals.
• Build menu's for point and click data entry with a Menu Builder
• Graph "All" Bg values, "Daily average" or "Selected fields" in user selected date ranges.
• Print BgLevel reports, meal reports and graphs suitable for your physician or dietician.
• Preview BgLevel reports, meal reports and graphs. (Combined report only at this time)
• Download information from your glucometer. (Accu-Chek Advantage only for now).

Things are moving along nicely with the program. A few comments follow...

1. The program data is currently being housed in a database that is written without the aid of a database driver. This makes it load instantly for now but when the db gets larger I am afraid it will bog down. So far I have tested it with a years worth of data and it took about 7 secs to load and 10 secs to save. There is also the future consideration of deeper relationships than are currently being implemented. If you know of a reasonable way or of a product to do a good database that will be small, fast and any user can use it without having to pay more for it, please let me know.
2. Being quite new to the glucometer game, I don't know a whole lot about it but there are serial cable hookups and software for downloading data from many glucometers. I would like to get this working for as many as possible but I can make no promises. So far we have been able to access one glucometer but hope to include a few more when time permits. After the beating I've taken over figuring out the first one, I may have to take some time away from it just to let my head clear.
3. With the addition of meter reading it became imperitive to add a time field to use the meter data effectively. This caused a complete rewrite of the databases, loading, saving, charts and printing routines. I elected to go the same route as the commercial software I obtained from Boehringer-Mannhiem's Camit software. After all the work... I am not happy with the direction it took. It caused a lot more headaches but I am afraid it may be too late to turn back now. I hope this change will not cause any problem for the good users of the program.

For over a month and over 500 hours of work (yes... 528 to be exact) I have lived, slept and breathed this program with no other priorities. This is essentially a labor of love, so to speak and I need to get back to making a living so the updates may come slower in the future.

If you, your family or friends have to track blood sugar and are looking for an OS/2 solution, please contact me.